I had the honour and privilege of being the 2025 Edmonton Public Library Writer in Residence last year. It was a crazy rollercoaster–far more challenging emotionally than I had anticipated–but I am very proud of the job I did and feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to meet so many amazing people that I might not otherwise have been exposed to. Originally, I wanted to write a long, detailed recap of my tenure as WiR, but as it has a habit of doing, I can feel the time for that beginning to slip away from me. I think it is more important that I share a shorter recap in a timely manner than that I wait until I can find or make the time to write a longer, more detailed one.
So I’m using an email I sent as the basis for this post, just excerpting from it. As you’ll see, even this ‘short’ version is quite long LOL
*** WiR Recap ***
My two big goals when I became WiR were 1) to establish events, preferably recurring, where authors could find their community, and 2) create a new venue for published authors to sell at. I achieved both to varying degrees of success.
Over the course of the year I had 139 one-on-one consults with clients, meeting with them primarily to give them feedback on their writing but also to answer questions about how publishing works. Their writing spanned across every genre you can imagine, but there was a very strong F&SF contingent. I don’t know if that’s typical or if the fact that’s the field I primarily work in that created that effect, but it was nice to see.
I frequently say that ‘Writing is a Team Sport’, and by that I don’t mean writing by committee — writing is, of course, actually a very solitary activity — what I mean is that we writers are at our best when we are surrounded by a team. A team who gets it. Who can prop us up when we fall down, who understands when we say, ‘I got a personal rejection letter from my dream market!’ with excitement even though it’s a rejection letter. What I’m trying to say is that though writing is a solitary endeavour, writers crave community.
One of the biggest recurring things I noticed this year is how many writers are just desperate for honest feedback. We want to know ‘Is this good?’ and if not ‘How can I improve it?’. Like. For real. For the most part, people didn’t just make meetings with me so I could tell them their writing was good and give them head pats, they wanted an honest appraisal of their work — it’s strengths and weaknesses. A lot of people who came to see me were looking for a critique group and I wasn’t sure where to point them.
To address this need, I hosted a small study group of six (plus me) who met every month for six months and worked our way through all the exercises in Steering the Craft. My hope is that once we finish the book (in January), those writers will continue to meet as a writing/critique group while I move on to coordinate and host the next Steering the Craft study group. That second group is starting up in the middle of January (even though I will no longer be the Writer in Residence after Wednesday), and I already have people on a list for a third group to start in June once the second is done.
I don’t know if all the people in my StC groups will continue to meet with each other once I step away, but I think a few might, and that’s a few more people within the community that they are connected to than they were before, and that makes it feel worth it to me. That’s why I will keep hosting these Steering the Craft groups for as long as I can keep filling them.*
In addition to the one-on-ones and StC group, I also hosted a virtual write-in every other week. Over the course of the year 328 different people attended those write-ins where we used the Pomodoro method to get some writing done alongside some socializing. A lot of people (myself included) really appreciated having a dedicated writing time in their calendar and some positive social pressure to go along with it. I also held a monthly in-person get-together for local writers that I called Third Thursdays (I bet you can guess when they were scheduled for lol). Most months we didn’t have any sort of dedicated agenda, but just came together to talk about books and writing, to celebrate each other’s wins, commiserate on the tough spots, share information and basically just create connections.
It is my understanding that the next Writer in Residence is going to continue the regularly scheduled virtual write-ins and in-person get-togethers in some format or another into 2026, which makes my heart happy because based on the feedback I received and the effects I observed myself (people who first came and only lurked but then slowly began to engage in conversation, or people saying ‘I made myself finish this draft so I could come here and tell you all about it’, for example) made it clear that they were really very helpful to people.
A conversation at one of the virtual write-ins resulted in my DMing a short term D&D campaign with a bunch of writers who were looking for a D&D group, or just to try the game as an exercise in collaborative storytelling. Much like with the Steering the Craft group, I think it would be awesome if this group continued to meet once my time with them was done, but in the meantime we are focusing on forging connections and telling a cool story together. Also like the StC group, I will not be done with this once my WiR tenure officially ends (D&D games always take longer than you think they will, don’t they?) but should be finished early in 2026.
As part of my second big goal (creating a new venue for authors to sell books at) I organised a Local Authors Book Fair that took place in July. 33 local authors all had books included and the book sale doubled as a social event where readers and authors could interact (including authors interacting with each other) because the ‘book fair’ format meant authors didn’t need to be sitting behind a table that contained just their books all day. Sales were not amazing, but most of the authors said they would love to participate again if this became a recurring event.
I also hosted the following programming:
A Wizard Did It! (World-building and magic systems as science) – Laura VanArendonk Baugh
Creative Collaborations – Anna Marie Sewell and Myself
Writing for Video Games – Brent Knowles, Trick Weekes and Cassandra Weir
Common Problems in Short Fiction – Myself**
Ask an Agent Anything – Lisa Gouldy and Gabrielle Harbowy
Writing Mysteries – Candas Jane Dorsey, E.C. Bell and S.G. Wong
Five Room Dungeons (and short story structure) – Myself
How to use D&D to create characters for your fiction – Myself
Kite-Making (An art therapy session that involved giving our words wings) – Kerri Strobl
Being Other People (ghostwriting and pen names) – Alison McBain and Myself
Ask Me Anything About Self-Publishing – Myself
I was a guest judge at a poetry recitation contest, got to bring some of my Third Thursday regulars up for a private session on book binding (using the EPL’s book binding machines) where we made notebooks, and was on the jury for Capital City Press’ annual anthology.
I found myself flailing a bit when I first stepped into the position — trying to figure out how things worked, and just getting set up — so I created a quick and dirty handbook that covered some of the things I most would have liked to have known when I started and gave that to my successor. And I also developed a handy dandy helpful links document that I added to and revised over the course of the year to try and identify resources to answer the questions I was most commonly asked.
As someone who is vociferously against any kind of LLM or GenerativeAI this was a challenging year, because I spent a fair amount of it talking about GenAI and why it should be avoided, but it was also a really inspiring year. I got to meet so many new people, and especially brand new writers who aren’t yet as jaded as I am. Their love for storytelling and their enthusiasm rekindled a fire in me that was at risk of going out. I think I was able to help most of the people I encountered, in some way or another, and they did the same for me. I’m so, so grateful that I had the chance to take on this role.
Being the Writer in Residence was a lot of work but it was also incredibly fulfilling and I loved it 🙂
*** End Recap ***
